Weekend reading: Your New Year future self, plus a look back

Before I started focusing all the time I spent faffing on the Internet into one blog, I posted a lot on various money forums.

One phrase I used a fair bit was ‘your future self’. To be honest, I think I assumed I’d invented it.

Not in a self-aggrandising way, you understand. More like you presumably know what you had for breakfast.

However, it’s become clear in recent years that either:

A) I’m overdue a Noble prize in economics for coining the concept of ‘the future self’, which has gone on to be used everywhere

Or,

B) The term ‘future self’ was in action well before I pinched it.

I’m an autodidact dilettante when it comes to economics (and pretentious vocabulary) so perhaps you know full well that the concept of the future self was coined by, say, Carl Jung in the 1930s, when he was too lazy to diet, and wanted a conceptual get-out clause. (Or perhaps he was just looking forward to spanking Keira Knightley).

Whatever my accidental hubris, a reader kindly thought of me – perhaps remembering my post on borrowing from your future self – when he saw this TED lecture by Daniel Goldstein on the battle between your present and future self:

We hope you enjoyed reading Monevator in 2011 as much as we enjoyed writing it.

Which to be honest was sometimes more than other times. I admit on occasion I’d rather have been tucked up in bed with a good book and a hot chocolate, or out on the town with neither. But I always believed that keeping up with this blog would be worth it in the long run.

I hope that you (mainly) feel the same – about Monevator, and more importantly about your investing.

Thanks for reading! Monevator is a simply spiffing blog about making, saving, and investing money. Please do check out some of the best articles or follow our posts via Facebook, Twitter, email or RSS.

Happy New Year, and many thanks for your efforts. Your “Financial advisers: Swindlers and leeches” post almost a year ago had a quite profound effect on me. It made me summon up all the misgivings I had been having about my advice and finally do something about it. Even then, it took me six months to get enough ‘courage’ to write the “How do I transfer out…?” letter. It’s all done now.

What I have found a little surprising is that although I am dealing with quite a lot of money on my own behalf, I don’t find it particularly worrisome or burdensome. I have doubts and indecisions obviously, but on the whole, I am sure that I have done the right thing.

Happy New Year and best wishes for joy and prosperity. Glad I found you – have been looking for PF blogs in the UK and apart from the really big ones these are very few. Will be visiting! Oh, and you may take a long time to write your posts but I can see why.